“It’s nice to have your own place, I will admit that. And it’s nice to have your own time because you can keep people from calling you on the phone and breaking your concentration. Of course, what they’re really doing by breaking your concentration is scaring that scruffy little fleabag back into the bushes.
“That part of the romance I really believe. There is indeed a half-wild beast that lives in the thickets of each writer’s imagination. It gorges on a half-cooked stew of suppositions, superstitions and half-finished stories. It’s drawn by the stink of the image-making stills writers paint in their heads. The place one calls one’s study or writing room is really no more than a clearing in the woods where one trains the beast (insofar as it can be trained) to come. One doesn’t call it; that doesn’t work. One just goes there and picks up the handiest writing implement (or turns it on) and then waits. It usually comes, drawn by the entrancing odor of hopeful ideas. Some days it only comes as far as the edge of the clearing, relieves itself and disappears again. Other days it darts across to the waiting writer, bites him and then turns tail…”
Thus saith Stephen King, whom I’ve never read but couldn’t agree with more. For more insight into his painfully accurate assessment of the writing life, go to the Washington Post article here. Happy writing.
